The White Collar on yhe Ex-Blue Collar is a Cool Collar
Carliner, Lewis
Do I like my job—why shouldn't I?" The idea that he shouldn't like his job stops him for a second. He flutters with his long collar points. "It's clean," he says, "just look." You look...
...They were children when Nixon was a congressman, or senator, or a candidate for vice-president...
...All things considered, they are happy in their present situation...
...Their sense of financial well-being is echoed in their attitude toward their jobs...
...He has a natural preference for Italians, since he was brought up an Italian...
...One of these was a woman...
...Twenty-four years old, computer operator on the third shift of the central computer installation of the largest company of its kind in the United States, which means the world...
...The CubanSpanish black man is going to become an education administrator...
...They are young, average age 31, but three are less than 25, three are in the 25-30 bracket...
...one has everything he wants, another is independent, one has a nice home and a wonderful child, one speaks of his joy with his wife and children, a man has a good family and a good living, and a man proudly asserts he has many of the things he wants for his children...
...They are all ethnics, so-called, first-, second-, or third-generation immigrants— three Italians, one Cuban, one Dutch, one Norwegian, one Swede, one German, one Irish, one Czech, and the one black...
...What they like about their jobs is that there is a future, jobs are interesting, indeed challenging, the pay is good, the workplace clean, and one, like the man who has a thing on money, has a thing on computers...
...another agrees with Wallace's no-busing position, one agrees with reservations, and one says he is okay but farout...
...Otherwise there is no comparison...
...Some already have, and their legend echoes through the empty offices during the night shifts...
...Seven of the eleven think they have made it up the social ladder past their parents...
...Four, however, do have someone they respect—the same person, a night supervisor who made it up from computer operator and before that from asLEWIS CARLINER sembly worker, and who went to college during the day while he worked at night, graduated, all the while taking superb care of his family and home...
...He thinks that the poverty subculture does not understand what the Jews understand, that it is possible to succeed...
...What helps them enormously is a working wife, or a second job...
...The judgment of these ex-blue-collar workers on unions and union leaders have a similar quality...
...Computer operators responded differently in their discussions, and perhaps one feature of their experience explains the difference: they have no immediate, continuing interchange with black people in the main, not on the job, which is white except for the demonstration black, and not in their neighborhoods, which are white also and outside of the urban centers...
...But recently he has decided that if he has any ethnicity, he is a black because blacks are more honest...
...The new white collar with the long points is a cool collar...
...Criticism of the society is mitigated by a strong belief that things are not really bad in spite of everything, there is progress, things are better than in the past, progress is slow but it's progress, young people's ideas give you hope, radical ideas are a reason to be optimistic, it is a good place to live, there is free enterprise, and freedom of speech...
...It's clean," he says, "just look...
...As for the other workers, they are happy because they are doing what they want, are financially fulfilled...
...Above them are supervisors, some who made it up in the free-and-easy days, but chiefly men who were college-trained in accounting, engineering, or business administration, and who moved over...
...All except one of the computer operators walked off the street into the job...
...Their complaints about their present situation are strikingly few and these are moderate...
...The mothers were all housewives, or cooks, cashiers, or minimal white-collar workers...
...You look around, and it is clean, only a few people in the computer section...
...What makes it worth knowing these 11 former blue-collar workers who are now computer operators, in addition to their attractiveness, their intelligence, and their genuine interest in their neighbors in this world, is that they seem to represent something happening in American society...
...Five support him, he is the candidate of three for reelection, two are for him with reservations, while four do not favor him...
...THE WHITE COLLAR ON THE EX-BLUE COLLAR IS A COOL COLLAR 263...
...Without exception they have workingclass parents, only one has a parent who went to college, and he is a black who is also the best educated of the 11 (he takes advantage of his night-shift employment to go to the university and will graduate in February 1972...
...What emerges is that while there may not be affluence in these families with incomes in the middle ranges (they earn both more and less than blue-collar workers, more than most operatives, less than most skilled), there is still a sense of affluence, there is less anger and more patient patriotism and antiwar religious conviction than is assumed...
...One Irish father of six children bit his lips, gripped his hands until his knuckles whitened, and visibly seemed to be waging an inner contest with some evil within himself...
...Tricky Dick is not an epithet they mouth...
...He approves of the present Administration which is doing the best it can, he disapproves of the materialistic profitoriented society, his candidate for president is Richard Nixon and he has no candidate for vice-president, thinks George Wallace is an effective politician but a bigot and wants no part of him...
...Two are 35-40, 2 are over 40, the oldest is the black who is 46...
...There is an unvarying comment that unions should stick to bargaining, they are too powerful, they overreach, they are good for workers but still not satisfactory, they are not always positive, they are good but too strong, they are getting out of hand and, finally, they can be bought...
...Within a 30-mile radius of the two plants studied, there are 75 electronic data processing companies...
...In the society, in their personal lives, on radio or TV, in politics, or wherever, is there some person or institution, or collectivity they trust...
...Whether they are affluent depends on what you consider affluence to be, but these exblue collars are almost euphoric when they talk about their economic situation...
...The Cuban-Spanish ethnic had a Puerto Rican mother, was married to a white Tennessee Protestant, had always been regarded as white...
...In a muted counterpoint against their quiet criticism, they insist there are good things about the country...
...They are white-collar, happy, conscious of progress...
...LEWIS CARLINER The hint of an antiestablishment commitment is carried forward in their reactions to George Wallace...
...As much as they are attached to their jobs, the ex-blues do not love the company, they are not starry-eyed about the administration, nor for that matter are they hostile to the company...
...So they got jobs by going out and looking for them...
...Most are married, eight out of the eleven—and the average family with children includes slightly less than five people, with a total of 19 children for the entire group, married and unmarried...
...However, if Nixon does not bother them, the government and government officials do...
...Their mortgages with one exception are in the $10,000–$20,000 range, and one man's house is owned clear...
...The second and third shifts work in empty buildings at night...
...Key-punch operators, lowest grade, get salaries of $4,500 to about $5,000, mostly women, some black, but very few...
...The clock says 1:30, and the computers are rattling out paper, very like the sound of railroad wheels in another time...
...The one person who calls him insincere is the oldest among them, the 48-year-old black man, and he holds Nixon accountable for his hypocrisy on civil rights and schools...
...The supervisors are overbearing, the pay is too low (this from the lowestpaid man), they don't like the night shift, too routine, too rushed, people don't associate with each other, and one said there was lack of opportunity...
...They have this high regard for Jews because Jewish people know how to succeed, how to get educated, how to stick together...
...One person had no views on the Alabama governor but eight reacted positively to him and only two rejected him— as a racist in one case, and in the second case, simply because he didn't like the man...
...Salary $10,000 a year, married, his wife works, Italian, practicing Catholic, father was a truck driver and mother a cashier in a dress shop...
...Two could not think of anyone or any organization...
...Some say possibly...
...They consciously resist an impulse that might lead them to consider themselves bigots...
...They intend to stay in computers, with two exceptions...
...They seem to respond with a faint defensive truculence politically and in part personally to events that threaten their economic well-being, which could be represented by a small money-bag in spite of the traditional union bugling that the average factory wage is less than it takes for a minimum standard of living for a family of four...
...one does not like shift work, one is not excited about the career ahead of him, one regrets his limited education and the necessity for his wife to work, one finds staying within his budget very hard (he has six children), one cannot really afford his house, and the black worker is uneasy because he is not doing more for youngsters, not his own, but youngsters in general...
...No one in the company, for example, in the judgment of six of the computer operators, is really admirable...
...Savings are important to them, they own mutual funds, one speculates in the market, (200 shares of Alpha Omega based on his admiration for James Ling), they buy government savings bonds, and they have savings accounts...
...three have no debts at all, only one owes more than $1,000, the rest fall in the $100–$1,000 range...
...In these installations, there is a caste system...
...The field has opened up suddenly...
...A fifth person had high respect for an accounting supervisor...
...To them President Nixon is not too unlike themselves, fair, sincere, doing the best he can, winding the war down...
...Seven of the eleven think the American schools are doing a pretty good job, the assimilated black man thinks they fait to motivate children (his own experience, except he had returned to college at the age of 27), the other black thinks they stink...
...Computers in these two companies go around the clock, because the huge investment or rental demands that they be used almost continuously...
...it is regressing, Vietnam and the college upheavals have produced a situation where there is no respect for anything (a 42yearold man) ; the country is money-oriented, drugs are a problem, there is an urgent need for money for pollution control and for the 262 cities, there is graft and oppression, the war and high prices are worrisome, the country is polarized by factional politics and races, the nation is confused and divided, unemployment is high, wages drag, the democratic process is not working, there is no say for the masses...
...They are middle-class, they say, at least seven described themselves this way, three say they are upper-working-class, and the CubanSpanishPuerto Rican who has chosen black honesty insists he is working-class...
...The computer operators do, or at least four of them do, admire Jews above all other ethnic groups in American society (only two other ethnic admirations were expressed...
...They all quit school sometime between their 15th and 19th years...
...He does not know anyone happier than he...
...Now they are no longer blue-collar...
...There are both Jews and wnsPs in the upper echelons of the companies, but none on this level...
...If they are troubled at all, anxiety seems to be a variation of an uneasiness that appeared also on their jobs, the neighbors could be more friendly...
...What is bad about the country is that it is screwed up...
...Union leaders are seen as doing their job, in some cases quite well, although many are shifty and not too intelligent they do a good job, they represent the masses, but they are profiteers, pretty powerful, too self-important, or a cause for unemployment...
...Articulate, intelligent, moderately well-informed, they hold opinions, relatively unstereotyped, on ethnic groups, on the nation, the administration, Richard Nixon, the candidates for president and vice-president, George Wallace, union leaders, government officials, and education...
...At Ford's Pinto plant, the manager gets a report each morning on the cost of every operation of the previous day...
...Vietnam recurs, but in all a quiet mutter of many things...
...Whether they were speaking their mind or not, nothing like the hot resentment got into their manner which raised the voices of young bluecollar union workers on these subjects in earlier discussions...
...When it is finished, it will describe interviews conducted with young blue-collar union workers, under thirty, interviews with bluecollar union workers in their middle age, and with blue-collar union workers who expect to retire within five years...
...One, the black man, said not really, and one did not like his lack of freedom of movement, but he was also dissatisfied with his pay, didn't like his job because people did not associate with each other, and if he could, would require the company to live by a rule of fairness...
...Looking out on the country they convey a sense of detached dismay, five think the country is in a pretty bad way, three insist things are really rather good in spite of what you hear, and one says things are okay...
...On the next rung are the computer operators, whose wages range from $7,500 to $10,000 in one of the two companies, and from $10,000 to $13,000 in the second...
...They will be compared with nonunion factory workers in corresponding age groups...
...President Nixon in their minds is a source of comfort...
...But all that considered, five of the eleven still would rather live in New Jersey than anywhere else in the world...
...The black mother, a college graduate, was a domestic...
...Two have comments on the world in general but they will not say good or bad...
...Moreover, they are also beneficiaries of family-life patterns that curiously are never reported by either Census or Bureau of Labor Statistics data...
...They wanted their sons to be bakers, own a business, but for the most part expected LEWIS CARLINER their kids would do well if they got a job...
...What the young man with long sideburns, long hair, and a wide, ornamented leather belt does not like is working on the third shift...
...Only in three cases (one black) did the parents even hope that they might go to college...
...Reels of tape activating the takes, in spurts and stops, rock back and forth...
...Their debt outside the mortgage, even when the car is counted in, is no trouble...
...This is New Jersey, and it is notable that there are no Jews among these people, and no WASPs...
...one man called him American, a radical but what he says makes good sense...
...If they could change the operation so that it would meet with their approval rather more than it does now, all except two would make some changes, for the most part nonrevolutionary: greater fairness, two thought there should be an intensive on-the-job education program (there is a tuition refund benefit), two wanted more modern computers, 370s to replace the 360s, one wanted the management to be more honest, two wanted a friendlier shop with more cooperation...
...The black without qualifications dreams of becoming a teacher...
...Three moonlight, or rather daylight, since they go off their secondand third-shift jobs to other jobs in the daytime...
...What kind would they want to marry into their family?—the assertion of nonbigotry held up, too...
...One did not know what his father did because he deserted, leaving the mother to raise the abandoned 258 children with the Aid to Dependent Children grant...
...Only two men have anything good to say about government officials, one says they are representative of the country, the other believes they are doing what the majority want...
...They come out of the blue-collar, ethnic, working-class occupational trends which move workers toward bureaucratic white-collar employment...
...All except one of the eleven acknowledges the necessity for unions...
...Working wives plus moonlighting mean that only three of the eleven men are completely responsible for breadwinning...
...Inheritances have helped some buy houses, a settlement for an accident figured large in the financial history of another family, and support and gifts from families have helped...
...The median age THE WHITE COLLAR ON THE EX-BLUE COLLAR IS A COOL COLLAR 259 is 27...
...Organizational loyalties are giving way to judgment of the personal qualities of leaders...
...Ethnic, overwhelmingly Catholic, no college graduates among them, almost by specification they are the kind of people who are supposed to feel angry, betrayed, anti-Semitic, antiblack, antischool system, and up in arms under the leadership of George Wallace against the school system...
...Middleaged factory workers have responses of their own...
...Someone notes schools are outmoded, and another man, aged 42, remarks that kids are running the school system...
...In central New Jersey, the branch plants of all the big companies have on-site computers in addition to the central office systems...
...four would trust priests and ministers if they were in some kind of crisis, three had faith in doctors in general, two would put their trust in police, two would seek out a well-known civil liberty or civil rights leader if they were in a jam (not the black, he would trust no one), one had faith in Ralph Nader, one believed in medical researchers, one trusted farmers in general, and one had total faith in his personal lawyer who unfortunately had died a month ago...
...One confessed that he had a thing about money...
...The political language and currency of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s have ceased to circulate among these young workers...
...He loves them...
...there is a cultural upheaval and the country is caught in a profit-taking, materialistic set of goals...
...Yet the convinced consensus is that the schools are good, the computer people themselves got good educations, and the schools are getting bet' ter...
...Comparing these jobs with their former blue-collar jobs, only two claims were made for working in a factory, and these were not central to their opinions: there was less pressure on you in a factory, and there was the union in the plant that gave you the right to your own opinions...
...To understand what has happened to them, it is necessary to know something about their work...
...They have shared what might be called speculations or paying work prospects with their parents...
...Six are in families with more than one wage-earner...
...The eight others, including the black worker, said he was open and frank...
...With two exceptions, they like their homes and their neighborhoods...
...Three of them had gone to commercial computer schools which like most of such near-fraudulent operations promised jobs that were not delivered...
...Perhaps they were hypocritical, but they did note without snickering that they had dated black women, Puerto Rican women, and had all kinds of friends...
...White-collar jobs are opening up, and in New Jersey, at least, the people in the two companies apparently typify the people who are getting these jobs—whiteskinned blue-collar ethnics, with an occasional black or woman...
...About the factory workers approaching retirement, just one impression—gentleness...
...Most of the parents did not expect them to go to college...
...In all, there was a substance in their talk about their finances...
...One completed grade school only, four went to high school and more or less finished, while six have gone to college, mostly community college for a year or so...
...The other six wanted to move to California or Florida, to Puerto Rico, or go back to Iowa in the case of the man who trusted farmers...
...This is true but irrelevant, since about as many workers live on the average factory wage as angels on the head of a pin...
...Seven of the eleven like their jobs without reservations, even the reservations of the others suggest that their attitudes are like those of a man critical of a wife who serves him well...
...All except two of these former blue-collar workers are Catholic, the American black is Methodist, the Norwegian a Lutheran...
...Until about two years ago they might have gone from computer operator to computer programmer, which begins at about $13,000 and goes to about $17,000, but increasingly computer programmers and the higher level supervisors are now college-trained...
...small squares of light —red, yellow, green, blue—have their own character, some gleam, some brood, others flicker off and on...
...There is a final surprise in the attitudes of these new white collars, their attitude toward education...
...Enough has been done to suggest that blue-collar workers under 30 have organized their paranoic-tinted outlook on the world so that they see people, institutions, and events differently from middle-aged workers, largely because they are under a great deal more economic pressure...
...Of the eleven men, six disclaimed any ethnic preferences or animosities...
...And so in the two companies studied here, jobbers, brokers, time salesmen hang around the computer installation at night, living examples of free-lance entrepreneurs very like the computer operators, except that they have not only made it across the line from blue-collar but are also jousting for a chance to make it big...
...even though he is a bigot he is a good politician...
...Any meaningful definition of a workingclass ethnic would have included these men until the day they got their computer-operator jobs...
...Among young blue-collar workers, by contrast, interviews and discussions were often barbed and bitter when the talk turned to their understanding of their experience...
...Do I like my job—why shouldn't I?" The idea that he shouldn't like his job stops him for a second...
...260 They are where they were going, so for the most part they do not seriously intend to return to school for career advancement...
...Union leaders are by no means the idols of these happy computers, but surprisingly there was no talk of goons, racketeers, or labor bosses...
...But even these criticisms washed out when they were asked to compare their jobs with the blue-collar jobs they once had held...
...A tall, curving, thin man, white, is mopping, sweeping, and pushing a bucket, not simultaneously but in a methodical three-way pattern...
...He flutters with his long collar points...
...Economic problems tend to be politicalized less in the minds of these workers than in the formulations of unions...
...the other two were college graduates who refused to be interviewed— the one with the shining yellow tie, because he didn't want to have to do with anything that smelled of university research or foundations, and the other, who somehow kept hidden all night, his co-workers explained, was too shy to speak even to them, except in whispered monosyllables...
...This report is part of a work in progress...
...The relaxed and happy ethnocentric Italian American (more American than Italian) is one of the computer operators on the second and third shifts, 4:30 in the afternoon to 12:30 at night to 8:30 in the morning, in two of the top 100 corporations in the U.S.—one of the largest corporations in its field and the other, a billion-dollar company among the top corporations in its market...
...These words were as remote from their awareness as is the impression of President Nixon as a man you would not buy a used car from...
...He said he tried not to be a bigot—it was a mortal sin, he knew, to be a bigot—but he has a brother who is a THE WHITE COLLAR ON THE EX-BLUE COLLAR IS A COOL COLLAR 261 policeman in New York and another brother who is a fireman, and try as hard as he can to see no color, blacks and Puerto Ricans have no respect for law and order and are unwilling to work their way...
...What about the society they live in...
...This does give these workers some color of importance as a possible clue to a measure of changes in attitude...
...Independent companies of any size have them...
...When this question was approached in other ways—what kind of person would they want to live next door to...
...The nighttime computers of two very large corporations are hardly the United States, or even an accurate sample of anything that could be described as broadly representative of anything in the nation, but that said, there are some clues in the attitudes of these people on new jobs in a new industry...
...The other objections to Nixon are that he is a liar, his price policy came along too late, he is not spending enough money on public projects...
...Altogether there were 14 workers in this category in the two companies, all, except three, former blue-collar workers...
...he is independent, he has a sports car, a motor bike, and next year he is moving out of the apartment where he lives with his wife to a house he is going to buy, for which he has already saved up the down payment...
...All except two of the eleven, like their parents, are buying their own homes, and unlike their blue-collar counterparts, buying a house and furnishing it does not exert pressure on them...
...In one case, there was something resembling a family exertion, a mother working in the office of a factory got her son his first job in the plant, which led in time to the computer job...
...three said they were about at the same station in life, and one didn't know...
...Blacks said whites got away with things that would have brought automatic discipline to them, and whites said they would rot in jail or be fired on the instant for the kinds of things blacks did...
...Their fathers were laborer, electrician, garbage man, huckster, baker, truck driver, printer, factory worker, longshoreman, bus starter...
...They are alienated according to Marxist definition, but decidedly unalienated by psychological or sociological criteria...
...Since there is time left over on the computers after all the company demands are met, computer time is often sold to outsiders, in some cases computer operators who have worked up their own program to maintain payrolls or keep books for small businesses...
...In fact, in a rather admirable way, they are not any of these and this is especially evident when they talk about schools...
...but the people he admires most are Jews, because they have the ability to succeed...
...The others picked up the skill, which is not a very high one, along the way...
...Italian, because, "that was the way I was brought up," and Polish, "they go to my church and they are good people...
...In New Jersey women with blue-collar backgrounds, far from being bored punching cards and tape, are up-borne by the cleanliness, the airconditioned cool, and the dignity...
...Professionalization is setting in, lines are being drawn, and today the computer operators themselves recognize that they are locked in where they are unless they go to school...
...As for the other nine, they simply do not like government officials because they are vague and crooked rich opportunists, many are bad locally but they are somewhat better nationally, they are too buyable, they are hot air, they could do more...
Vol. 19 • January 1972 • No. 1
